Congratulations, and Katie Mohr, from Wiley, will email you later today, to arrange sending your copy of the file.

Excel Gantt Chart Template

This week, Jon Wittwer, from Vertex42, has donated 4 copies his Gantt Chart Template Pro, for project tracking. The file is available in xls and xlsx versions, and uses formulas and conditional formatting to create the charts.

To use the template:

Enter your task information, and view the results by day, week or month.

Show weekends, or hide them

Scroll through the project date range, to focus on a specific time period

In the xlsx version you can even change the bar colours, by typing a code in a worksheet cell

It impressive what can be done in Excel, without any programming! You’ll see some useful techniques in this file that you can apply in your other workbooks too.

Sample Projects

The Gantt Chart Template package includes 7 bonus files, with sample projects. These will give you inspiration for setting up your own project, instead of starting from scratch. Here is a screen shot from one of the samples – Custom Software Schedule.

Gantt Chart Instructions

The Gantt chart template is easy to use, and there is a Help sheet in the workbook, to show you how to get started. That sheet has:

a link to the video tutorials, where you can see all the steps for setting up your file. I watched the videos, and they clearly explain what to do.

written instructions for entering your task information, linking the tasks, and entering different types of input.

answers to frequently asked questions about the template

Gantt Chart Licence

The Gantt Chart Template Pro has a generous licence, that lets you privately share your edited template within your company or organization. So, instead of software that requires a separate licence for each user, you and your co-workers can collaborate on the same template. There is a link to the licence in the workbook, where you can read the details.

Enter the Giveaway

Jon Wittwer, from Vertex42, has donated 4 copies of the Gantt chart file for this giveaway. If you’d like a chance to win a copy, please read the rules, and then make a comment below.

In your comment, tell us

why you would like to track your projects in Excel, instead of a different program

and/or what type of projects you would track with this Gantt chart template

Include your email address, so I can contact you if you win. Your contact information won’t be publicly visible, and it won’t be used for any other mailings.

The deadline is Wednesday, September 4th, 2013, at 12 noon Eastern Daylight Time.

One entry per person.

The 2 winners will be announced on Thursday, September 5th, 2013.

Each winner will have 24 hours to claim the prize, and if not claimed, another name will be selected.

28 Responses

I’d be looking to use this as the Office package I have been provided with for work doesn’t give me any other options! I’m currently using a (mostly) manual method of doing basic Gantt charts for tracking progress in operational readiness tasks so this would be a real timesaver while also have visual appeal.

Tracking in excel obviously is better than a dedicated software for a number of reasons. I’ve tried those before and they often require Java and are overly complex for rather simple project tracking. Or cost extra money.

I run a small business and we often collaborate on writing reports, so Gantt charting is useful for particularly large projects where there are dependencies and multiple deadlines.

Tracking in Excel is easier and more obvious. For example, if you use Microsoft Project, there are many contingencies that are automatic and can mess up your Gantt chart if you don’t totally understand how Project fills in those relationships. If you don’t want to have those relationships by default in Project, well, I’m not exactly sure how to turn all those things off and still have your Gantt chart!

As a Project Manager, I use Gantt charts to keep track of the tasks on my projects and see where I need to apply more resources (i.e., to identify the critical path). I would love to have a tool such as Jon’s to help me more easily get the projects done on time and budget.

I’m a Realtor in Lapeer County MI. This is 55 miles due north of Detroit.

I use MS Office products in my business and would love to have an Excel PM system with Gantt chart capability. I would use it to track both the buy and list process.
I would be able to show this to many of my Realtor friends.

In City government, we have two things for certain: 1) a low budget, and 2) a constant need for doing things on the fly.

It’s hard to carve out sufficient time to do proper planning, although we are getting much better at it. Still, in our world of limited resources, it’s often better to work with a flexible tool (Excel) that I’ve used for 20+ years rather than some enterprise software that I might not use terribly often. On top of that, everyone in my department wants to “live in Excel” when dealing with any reports.

We would use it for our annual plan, our three-year plan and any detailed project to boot.

Hi, Excell gantt charts would be standard, quick and convenient to display our schedules within the team with a standrd template as a bonus. The myriad of variations from my team makes intergration a time consuming effort.

In over 20 years of working in product development for an iconic international manufacturing company I’ve yet to meet anyone in our company that can use MS Project properly, obviously including myself despite numerous attempts at learning it. Now the licences within our company are so limited and I assume expensive we need not only high level approval to get out IT department to load it on our machines but if its not used for a period of 45 days its automatically removed!? So Excel is definitely my program of choice. We have many projects lasting 3 to 5 years and the biggest advantage Excel allows over project based software tools, I think, is to allow us to incorporate the project health with other key program metrics and build dashboards all within a single workbook. These templates would be ideal as they could be used on shared drives by multiple users as they have no vba code, so a great solution for the inability to share .xlsm files too..

Hi, I track our civil engineer projects with Excel,(just start using Power pivot), so it would be very valuable to try to combine different techniques and add expertise, as I am also in charge of PM/Excel training for our company, this is something I could share with my team.

I used simple complicated MS Procect files in the past or simple Excel Gantt charts.
The latter was for
– have an early plan before the project environment is available
– managers sometimes like SENT data with low complexity

Many of our project sites do not have MS Project for managing limited scope projects. The excel functionality brings a level of professionalism to our service delivery and value to our customers. Thanks for this very powerful tool which can be very helpful to a team with minimal software access.

The reason for 1st question is that i am used to with excle as i do most of my jobs on it so i would like to have this template.
And i would use this for tracking projects related to civil engineering construction.

I would use Excel because everyone at work has it. I’ve looked at using MS Project, but it doesn’t have the features I need. I’ve done my own version of creating a Gantt chart in Excel, and I’d be interested in seeing whether I could learn something new that I haven’t thought of on my own yet. Also, our need for the chart includes features such as needing to plot multiple single-point milestones along with the vertical line milestones. Also, I need to be able to plot multiple start dates (indicating delays with different colored segments of the bar), as well as stoppages (periods of time a project is put on hold, thus creating a gap in the bars). I can’t describe the nature of the data due to confidentiality, but in general, it is what most gantt charts are used for, tracking projects of some sort. Thank you for the opportunity.

I do track (and always will) in MS Excel as it gives me the ability to;
1. Distribute it widely as almost everyone has Excel (even the die hard Apple fans.)
2. Reports can be quickly generated even for ever changing requirements from stakeholders.
3. I can write macros to enhance/automate what I do everyday.

I track software development projects as I am an IT Project Manager… I do use MS Projects to initially develop the plan but move it to Excel to manage.

I use Excel for all my project management so if I can also have the Gant chart incorporated directly amongst all my other work related to the project such as budgeting, the time keeping, notes and links and any other related information, it would be fantastic.

Excel is one of the most friendly app windows has ever provided. My management reports, presentation and a host of various activities are done in excel. For a new project in my company i was looking for a suitable project management template in excel and I came across Gantt Chart Template from vertex. I downloaded the free version and it was simply superb. I was looking for the full version for me to work on my project which by the way is a huge one and the trial version which I was working on suited my purpose well.
I would like to track a new Project implementation and also sub projects within a existing project.

I use Excel for most of the work I distribute & like to be consistent. Also most of our team does not have MS Project. Our office is in the process of reorganization & a proper Gantt Chart with formulas would be a big help. The Chart I use now is mostly manually manipulated.

I would love the Gantt chart. I’ve used MS Project, but I would much prefer Excel for it’s versatility and ease of use. It’s so much easier to enter new tasks in a cell for Excel. You can also then easily take the task list and convert it for another use. I have converted paper project maps from Kaizens into project plans in Excel. I find that my method of color coding and marking out tasks overtime works well for me, but I think Gantt charts would really kick it up a notch. Most importantly it would make it easier for other people to interpret the project plan. What a wonderful idea.

I would love to have an excel based project management tool. I am a finance person by training, so I love excel and use it daily. As part of my job, I am managing a facilities staff who are tasked with a nine page list of renovation and maintenance tasks to be done over the next year. This Gantt Chart Tool would be perfect!

Most everything we do is in Excel, so Gantt charts would be a natural extension. If Dashboards, Project progress with Gantt charts a natural extension. Projects for me are software related – Optimization models. We also track construction projects, forecasts, etc. I have used simple Gantt charts for very basic time table projections.

Since I have no other option than to design a gantt-chart in excel for the company I work for, Vertex42 is my only help.
And since I’m not an expert in excel winning the pro sheet would be of enormous help !

I currently use a Gantt chart format I created in Excel, but this one looks far superior. I use it to track production jobs and marketing activities for grand openings, as an example. Excel is the tool of choice because (a) everyone has it (b) it’s readily adapted vs. having to buy into the exact model the creator of a fixed program made and (c)people generally understand Excel, whereas tools like Project require additional training and desktop licensing per user, etc.

Hi All:
Hope someone can help me as I have aproject that need to track stores being ordered and find out useage. Need to find the veriance to see if any misuse. The stores are ordered Monthly for ten locations. There needs to be a system in place to track the stores as the cost is going thru the roof. Help need a template.